


teach me to breathe / teach me to move

by telekinetics



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: (to quote oli) theo reading richard siken: boy i hope this doesn't awaken anything in me, M/M, gd theo's so repressed but he's like vaguely doing his best rn, mentions of kitsey & pippa & (ofc) audrey decker herself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 17:43:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinetics/pseuds/telekinetics
Summary: For a while, I managed to tell myself he was delusional, but I had the sneaking suspicion that there was a dam I had spent my life building and that it had been broken after that night in Amsterdam, perhaps for good.





	teach me to breathe / teach me to move

**Author's Note:**

> tw for suicidal ideation, trauma, drug & alc. abuse, all the general theo decker stuff

If asked, although I am less than inclined to believe that such a situation might happen, I suppose I would say I first began to consider it all after the business in Amsterdam. The waiting I had done, holed up in that hotel room with nothing to focus on but the leftover blood on my hands—metaphorical, of course, but in my state of mind the distinction hadn’t really mattered—I can imagine my thoughts drifting in dozens of undefined directions. Most importantly, of course, to my mother. I’d conjure a drug-fueled version of her, someone to run their hands through my hair and hold my body as I passed out from exhaustion and fear on the floor. 

The thing is—I’m assuming most of this. Apart from the dream I had, apart from the drafting of those letters, the dry-cleaned clothes, there are patches in my memory I can’t quite put together. Those days blurred into a long, murky strip of time; I can almost picture myself leaning over the manifestation of those uncharacteristically maudlin hours and blowing a cloud of dust away from it. Cleaning and polishing the silverware of my memories until it reflected my face right back onto it. What would I look like? What _do_ I look like? Again, it wasn’t until afterAmsterdam that I began to think about such things. For obvious reasons, when Boris first told me about stealing _The Goldfinch_ , it was that which occupied my thoughts above all. I’d ignored most of the other (tactless) things he’d said, and I maintain that I had good reason to, at the time: the painting came first, then and now. But there was nothing else to do in that regard, Fabritius’ caged bird resided safely within Mauritshuis, and I was here, freer in a sense, definitely freer than the bird itself, but still feeling trapped. My mother had saved my life in Amsterdam, and Boris had saved the painting—it was my turn, then, wasn’t it? To save something? I spent the following year going from gallery to gallery, taking in the art. And thinking. _Really_ thinking. And my mind, obstinate once it had its purpose, kept bringing me back to the night Boris had told me about the painting. How could I not remember showing it to him? I was fourteen and foolish but the knowledge that I had let such a thing slip shook me to my core. What else had I, in different days but similar states, told Boris? And, sure enough, as soon as I went down that line of thinking, another, objectively more troubling thought rushed in: how much of what Boris said that night was true? He was adamant about the damage I’d tried to inflict on myself, lying on cool roads at night, jumping off roofs and into pools, but Boris was a thrill seeker, worse than me, the farthest thing from docile that I’d ever encountered, and I had always thought he’d understood. I was less used to alcohol than he was, it made sense that it affected me differently. How was anything I’d done any worse than what _he_ had? Even now, Boris with his track marks, and the wife and kids he’d supposedly left behind, Boris with new teeth and the devil swimming in the depth of his eyes. He hadn’t changed at all. Wasn’t I supposed to be the neurotic one?

For a while, I managed to tell myself he was delusional, but I had the sneaking suspicion that there was a dam I had spent my life building and that it had been broken after that night in Amsterdam, perhaps for good. Memories I buried had risen to the surface; the thought of suicide had always been an ugly bruise that refused to heal, and I—again, with good reason—had often come back to it, even going so far as to attempt and fail. But none of that fit into the mold of functioning I established for myself, and I’d convinced myself those were mere outliers. Fine, maybe those outliers could be traced to Vegas. I had every right to want a way out back then. Maybe I’d gone too far one or two times, and that had tainted it all for Boris in his retelling. He had a habit for overdramatizing, after all. 

How badly I wanted to leave it at that. 

A different man, a better one, would have returned to New York and assumed the position he’d set for himself. It had become unflinchingly obvious that I, with my newly minted body count and a gaping hole where my heart should have been, was not that man. Kitsey and I called it off; it was done very quietly, over the phone the night after I’d walked through the Louvre. The whole thing was startlingly easy. I had tried to evoke some of the anger I had felt when I first found out about her affair, but Kitsey had always been a replacement for me, the consolation prize to Pippa’s continued rejection, and she had found somebody else who actually could love her (they both had, I often had to remind myself). I wasn’t anybody to deny her that, and, full disclosure—lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling of yet another European hotel, I couldn’t bring myself to particularly care. I tried, remembering that time I’d seen her with Tom Cable, beautiful grey eyes damp with tears, but she seemed more an alien in my memories than anything else, as if she was never quite meant to be there. I had never known her. I didn’t really want to. 

I almost called Pippa that night. I pressed the phone to my ear and closed my eyes, thought of what it would be like to hear her funny little voice. Sometimes, if I focused hard enough I could smell her woody and almost creamy perfume, a scent I associated with a nostalgic sort of childlike peace. I wished she was with me, but that was nothing new. It’s Christmas, now, I’m back in New York again, and my mind, of course, jumps to her first and foremost, like a child seeking solace from a—well, from a mother. I’ve thought and thought about Pippa and her words, her admission that she does, in fact, love me but that a relationship between two hearts as maimed as ours would lead to destruction, and have let myself tentatively agree. We email, from time to time, short bursts of information on how the other is doing, and it was in my desperation to read one of hers that I was able to define this thing between us, or, rather this thing I feel for her, this sign on a door that I had been reading wrong for years; not love, but need. Not desire, but safety. She was the last tenuous grasp I had on my mother, and I, young and scarred and covered in ashes, have been longing for the feeling of being whole since the day I lost her. It wasn’t coincidence that I chose to imprint on somebody who would make that chase more palpable. 

(It is only in finally writing this out that I am able to remember that Pippa’s signature perfume is actually something more like pine. The scent that came to me when I willed it to was actually the one belonging to my mother. Sandalwood. Yet another misstep I can’t understand.)

It was a strange discovery, not unlike the feeling of finally reaching the top of the ferris wheel and realizing you want to get off. It’s one I’ve not let myself dwell on; I accepted it, and I moved on. My heart still sings out to her in some ways, as I imagine it always will, but I don’t think I’ll be making any impromptu trips to England any time soon. In fact, I think I’ll stay in New York a while. The clarity is overwhelming, and I could use a return to humdrum routine, dull my senses a bit before I start traveling again. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Stalling. There is a story I want to tell. I guess it’s about me. I’m sitting here, on my bed, old journals from lost Vegas years open wide, and I’m looking for something. For a sign, I suppose, although I would never admit to that. I’ve been tracing my old, jagged handwriting for so long that the sunrise has begun to slip in through the blinds. I skim through the letters to my mother with intent, and I find damning evidence; of course I knew that I had wanted to die back then, but the force of the feeling was practically bleeding through the pages. “Cereal for dinner and cereal for breakfast and cereal for lunch. X and dad haven’t been home for two days. Boris said we’ll steal something tomorrow. ‘I feel like a fucking bird, with all this cereal,’ he said, whatever the fuck that means. Do birds eat fucking cereal??? He’s so fucking stupid sometimes I think I hate him. I hope this hunger kills me in my sleep. I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow. Where do people go when they die mom?” and so on and so forth, to quote a milder one. Most pages devolve into scribbling and tearing, anger and pain too big for such a small body. Most pages I don’t want to share, but you, dear non-existent reader, you get the gist. 

Boris is next to me, I guess I should mention. He still sleeps flat on his back, just like he did when we were fourteen and I could see his ribs poking out from underneath bruised skin, his breathing even and coming out in a cadence that, years later, I still recognize. Odd, how much remains the same even when things change drastically. Or, rather, odd, the things we retain and the things we don’t. Boris doesn’t know what he looks or sounds like asleep, but he remembers pulling me from the flames of self-destruction. He remembers tucking me into bed and holding me until I stopped shaking. He remembers what I am at my worst, that state I have worked so hard to hide and have in fact done so in such a successful manner that I, myself, do not quite know what I must have looked like to him. But, see, I know what Boris looks like at peace. Which, in between his philosophical excuses for drug addiction and mindless sardonic grin, isn’t that what _he’s_ worked to hide? That he was, beneath it all, just a man? A line from some Richard Siken poem comes to me; _You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them._

I am only thinking about all of this because of him. He’d shown up yesterday, unannounced, of course, dragging me to some bar, and it was all so typical I felt I was going to explode. It’d been almost a full year since I last saw him, nothing but sparse texts and the vague memory of that last Boxing Day in Antwerp, and somehow—just like the last time—here we were, picking up as if nothing but days had passed. Drinking and bickering, him with his gaunt face framed by the low smoky light, and me, drunk enough to let myself notice that. I kept meaning to pick a fight, yet losing not only my bravado but my reasons, grasping at straws. The crease between his eyebrows made me want to scream. Every time he made some sort of jab, familiar and jovial, I wanted to punch him in the mouth, see the blood on his lips as he bared his teeth at me, leering, always privy to something that I didn’t know. I wanted to be angry at him so badly. But I wasn’t. And I didn’t know what to do with that, so I followed his lead and kept drinking, laughing, as he pointed to girls around the room, saying we should take them all home and fuck them, his face so close to mine that his breath fogged up my glasses. It was the same thing he always said, the same thing we never did. For one thing, where would we go? Back to Hobie’s? Boris knew this. So I don’t know why he said it. Maybe he knew it bothered me. Did it bother me? Why did it bother me? How easily serenity could be washed away, the awareness I was sure I’d gained abroad only leading to more I didn’t know. The club was crowded and hazy, and it was Christmas Eve. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I stood up, grabbed Boris’ arm, and, to his credit, he didn’t say anything as I dragged us out of there and out into the cool night.

We walked back to the shop, and he talked for the both of us, as he usually did. Going on and on in that tangential way of his about all he was getting up to. I caught bits and pieces of it, something about not really living in one place and some run-ins with the law, but my thoughts were too muddled and I struggled to sort through them in a way I never quite cared to, before. My hand was still holding onto his bicep, and in my unfiltered state I was winded by the knowledge that I had chosen to not let go. That I had wanted to keep my hand there. I almost stopped walking completely, but I didn’t, letting myself be pulled along the streets. I wanted to punch him again. I wanted to yell myself hoarse. I wanted to lower my hand, feeling his fingers—cold and numb, we’d forgotten to bring mittens—around mine. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. What did I want?

We stumbled into the shop and up the stairs to my room, and Boris sank into my bed, closing his eyes and humming contentedly.

“Get the fuck off.” I said, although there was no heat to it—surprising, with the intensity of my turmoil. Boris cracked an eye open, easy smirk ever-present on his stupid fucking face. He put his hands behind his head and kicked his shoes off. The image of him, sprawled carelessly on the bed, reminded me of...similar scenes from our youth, and I wondered whether he’d done it on purpose. He looked like a painting. 

“S’alright if I stay with you, eh, Potter? Did not book a hotel or anything like that, so you better tell me ‘yes, Boris, your house is my house.’” He said, in a horrid imitation of what I assume was an American accent. The corners of his mouth were upturned, more genuine this time. His lips were chapped. I looked away. 

“My house is your house.” I corrected, shrugging off my coat. The heating was spotty up here, the draft from the vent counteracting the insulation, so I kept my sweater on. Boris, however, was lying in only a ratty tee—not the Never Summer one, but it might as well have been. In a move that was calculation playing at casual, I shoved his legs fully towards the right side of the bed, and settled down next to him, burrowing underneath the sheets. I reached to shut off the lights, and waited a moment before speaking again. “How long?”

“Eh?”

“How long are you staying?” I clarified, punctuating the thought with a yawn. Boris, in the dark, shifted to face me. The persians allowed only a small strip of moon to seep through, but it was enough for me to make out the shape of his nose, eyes, mouth. 

“You were not listening back there? Typical, Potter,” he reached forward to smack my forehead, and I huffed and hit his shoulder. “I do not know how long. This is why I do not book a hotel, see?”

“Oh, right, and you just thought you’d squat here in the meantime?”

“We have shared in beds much smaller than this.” I could picture him rolling his eyes. “Greedy motherfucker.”

“Yeah, when we were fourteen and weighed ninety pounds. Not exactly the same circumstances, I feel.”

“Bah. We had some good times. Not that you’d remember, blackout drunk, you.”

His words from last year came to me, swift and jarring: _I was trying to have fun and be happy. You were trying to be dead_. I felt the keen urge to turn away from him then, to close my eyes and pray for the oblivion of sleep. I didn’t do it.

“I remember enough.” I said, instead. Boris looked at me and looked at me. God. What did he see? 

“You do, eh?” He said, finally. “What do you remember, Theo?”

His use of my given name caught me off-guard. I didn’t know what it meant—a challenge, a threat, it was all the same to me in that moment. I thought of his breath on my glasses. I thought of my hand on his bicep. Silencing the sirens blaring in my head, I brought my fingers to the place where his shoulder dipped. We both shivered—I was right that it would be cold. Carefully, I traced the line of his neck up to his jawline, fingers fluttering beneath his cheekbone. I was reminded, all of a sudden, of Boris saying he would be able to pick out Fabritius’ bird from a lineup, no problem. I had agreed with him then, and I still did now. There were some things I would know even blind. 

It would be cliché of me to say that I didn’t know who closed the distance first. It would also be a lie. 

And, so, here I am. Hours later, sleepless, poring over accounts of a life I lived before this one, a life I had once thought was parallel, or perpendicular, never meeting or meeting once and never again, but nothing is ever so easily labeled or resolved, is it? I feel I’m on the brink of chaos; I don’t know whether I’m free-falling or flying, but if it looks the same, if it feels the same, does it matter that one ends in disaster sooner than the other? 

Everything feels off-kilter for me now. Maybe the world’s been righted on its axis, and here I sit, unused to its stillness.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "till death" by japanese breakfast which just so happens to be [on my goldfinch playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2fpW36KK9bfF8RoGfjG2Un?si=49LFYFR0S8erCkOh9rhCvg)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/younghamIet)  
> [tumblr](https://telkinetic.tumblr.com)


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